i don't have the taste-specific imagination that one needs, i'm guessing, to be a good cook. joe can take one whiff of a pumpkin bisque and know that it needs a certain kind of curry. emily and i, on the other hand, substituted frozen cherries for fresh cranberries in a holiday preserve because they were both round and red. ultimately it tasted divine, but we couldn't congratulate ourselves in good conscience.

i am, however, a vomit artisan. not real vomit (though, honestly, i find that awfully fascinating as well), but simulated vomit: when i was a slip of a girl, i dominated the lilliputian field of faux barf production to convince mum i needed to stay home from school. careful pummeling of things that looked like breakfast, a smattering of progresso bread crumbs, a dash of vinegar for that unmistakeable tang - i showed her a few early attempts, and honestly they may have been unconvincing, as the later triumphs never went beyond me and my palette. created for the pure joy of damn good mimcry, and flushed.

jen's slithy tove had me thinking yesterday. she opened the floor for a discussion of improbable reasons for love (he wears moccasins in the winter, he cried at the end of the hobbit). my initial think was a rejection of the premise - quirks endear because you're already infatuated with the whole thing, or because they suggest grander, more huggable traits (he's creative, she's sensitive). they're shoes and books, you know.

then i contemplated my navel for a bit and tried to simply respond. an approximation: the missus and i are a tesselation, a fish-bird-fish escher print. ignore the metaphor behind the curtain - i'm not saying that he completes me, that we complement one another. too squooshy. literally, you live with someone for long enough and your nose magically fits in their shoulder. their foot behind your knees, your arm on their back. add two cats who twine together in their sleep, and you have a monkey's fist for a bed. i've ended fights because it would be too weird to wake up sprawled on something i hated. it's a useful idiosyncrasy: sometimes your head decides things, and sometimes it's the random parts.